


National Public Radio

by DarknessAroundUs



Series: Cooper-Jones [2]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Cute Kids, Editor Betty Cooper, Established Relationship, F/M, Writer Jughead Jones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-14 01:19:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16030046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarknessAroundUs/pseuds/DarknessAroundUs
Summary: Betty Cooper and Jughead Jones on NPR.This is a coda but it stands on its own.





	National Public Radio

**Author's Note:**

> This is a coda to 10 Years but it stands on its own. There is no need to have read 10 Years first. 
> 
> If you have read 10 years this takes place a little over five years after the last chapter.

**Original air date July 2036, on KQED-FM, An NPR member radio station  
**

**Nuo Sedaris-Ahmad:** Today I welcome to the show a returning guest and a new one. Our returning guest is J.P. Jones, the author of what has turned out to be a large range of books including my personal favorite _When We Call Your Name._ With him today is Betty Cooper the co-author of _The New York Times_ bestselling young adult series _Clarke and James_ , about two teen-aged friends named Theo Clarke and Zoe James who solve crimes in Oakland, California. Jones and Cooper recently released the third installment of _Clarke and James_ entitled _Tear Stained Letter._ The book is currently first on the bestsellers list and is on its fifth week of publication. We are so glad Jones and Cooper could be with us here today.

 

 **Jones:** We are really glad we could be too.

 

 **Cooper:** I’m a long-time listener, so this feels pretty surreal to me.

 

 **Sedaris-Ahmad** : So first off I want to ask a clarifying question. You two are married and have been for a while, correct?

 

 **Jones:** Yes. Our legal last name is actually Cooper-Jones, but our pen names make things much more straight forward.

 

 **Cooper:** We’ve been married for 15 years now.

 

 **Sedaris-Ahmad:** But this series is your first collaboration, correct?

 

 **Jones:** Unless you count our daughter.

 

 **Cooper:** You definitely have to count Ava.

 

 **Jones:** She would be really upset with both of us if we didn’t include her.

 

 **Sedaris-Ahmad:** Ava is eight, correct?

 

 **Jones:** Yes, although she always counts the half.

 

 **Sedaris-Ahmad:** (laughs) I forgot about how vital those half years are, now that my kids are in their twenties. But my question is this, why after being married for 15 years and being together for over two decades…

 

 **Jones:** Shit, that makes us sound old.

 

 **Sedaris-Ahmad:** But it is true, right?

 

 **Cooper:** Right. As much as we hate to admit it, we are, or were, high school sweet hearts.

 

 **Jones:** No one needs to know that though. That right there is TMI. (There is laughing in the background).

 

 **Sedaris-Ahmad:** My question, if you will finally let me ask it is this – why after all this time together, did you just start collaborating as writers?

 

 **Cooper:** That is a good question. I am actually not a writer, really. I am an editor for the independent publisher Chronicle Books. I’ve never really written creatively post college, or I didn’t till five years ago, when Juggie, er.. J. Jones (background laughter) started writing this series. At first it was just supposed to be about a female narrator, Zoe James. She was supposed to be the main character and the focus. But he’d finished the first draft of the first book, and he thought it was lacking something important.

 

 **Jones:** Frankly it felt too derivative. Too Nancy Drew meets Veronica Mars.

 

 **Cooper:** He thought that there needed to be another main character. That Zoe would need a counter balance, and so that is when he came up with Theo Clarke.

 

 **Jones:** But I couldn’t write him to save my life. I mean I really couldn’t. He came out sounding all melodramatic and annoying. It’s not good when you want to kill one of your two main characters off, two chapters in. So I got Betty to look it over and she kept offering suggestions and finally, after she was so sick of me whining, she offered to write a sample chapter so I could start from there.

 

 **Cooper:** And after that chapter, he kept asking me to write another and another. I was reluctant at first, but I got addicted to writing the character of Theo Clarke. He honestly feels like a friend to me.

 

 **Jones:** Now we have co-written three books, so it all worked out.

 

 **Sedaris-Ahmad:** Theo Clarke is a boy from the wrong side of Oakland, with a drug dealing father, a younger sister he’s trying to keep from falling through the cracks, and a mother who may be in witness protection. He’s moody and funny, not to mention a little over protective. Zoe James is the daughter of two tenured Berkley professors, she’s a cheerleader, and a straight A Student, but when her sister dies, and she suspects one or both of her parents have something to do with it, her life changes. The funny thing is that Theo’s character is based on Jones’s life experience and Zoe's is based on Coopers, yet Jones can’t write Theo’s chapters. Cooper is the same true for you and Zoe?

 

 **Cooper:** Yes. I tried a couple times, not as hard as Jug did, because I already knew he could write Zoe, but it is hard to write a version of my teenage self without hyper focusing on the flaws.

 

 **Jones:** I think that I struggled with the same issue. I don’t like who I was as a teenager very much, yet I couldn’t be all that bad. After all that is the version of me Betty fell in love with.

 

 **Cooper:** And visa versa.

 

 **Sedaris-Ahmad:** So how do you plot out a novel that is co-written like this?

 

 **Jones:** We come up with the end goal and we both write towards it.

 

 **Cooper:** It is really that simple.

 

 **Sedaris-Ahmad:** So how much of it is actually based on your teenage experience?

 

 **Jones:** The characters are based on us, but not all of their actions.

 

 **Sedaris-Ahmad:** So you have never actually hidden a dead body?

 

 **Cooper:** No comment.

 

 **Jones:** Most of the mysteries are entirely different than the ones we grew up with. Although we certainly grew up solving mysteries. But the characters are more or less us. Although I don't eat nearly as much as Theo and Betty's relationship with her actual sister is very different. I’ve been open about this elsewhere, so it isn’t a big secret - I struggled with homelessness on and off throughout high school, and that is something Theo deals with as well. But I never lived in Betty’s house, and by book 3 Theo is living in Zoe’s house.

 

 **Sedaris-Ahmad:** Is it weird to think that Ava will read these one day?

 

 **Cooper:** Hopefully she won’t.

 

 **Jones:** I like to think that if she does she will just think of Theo and Zoe as characters. Her upbringing has been so different than either of ours.

 

 **Sedaris-Ahmad:** In what way?

 

 **Jones:** We are pretty well off financially at this point. Neither of us drink alcohol. We are much more understanding than Betty’s parents were. I work from home so Ava and I actually spend a lot of time together. It used to be spent largely at the park but lately she has been on a reading binge. She is a big Beverly Clearly fan.

Also I think most importantly Betty and I actually love each other.

 

 **Cooper:** I think that is a big factor. The loving each other. Our parents both had non-functioning relationships in very different ways.

 

 **Sedaris-Ahmad** : So my last question is what is up next for both of you?

 

 **Cooper:** I am still working at Chronicle.

 

 **Jones:** and we are about halfway through book four of the _Clarke and James_ series.

 

 **Sedaris-Ahmad:** And how many books total will the series be?

 

 **Jones:** At least 10.

 

 **Cooper:** Jug, you said 8 last time I asked.

 

 **Jones:** But I had a new idea….

 

 **Sedaris-Ahmad** : Thank you so much for joining me today!

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I used this handy generator http://www.publicradionamegenerator.com/ to come up with the hosts name. My personal favorite Public Radio book program is The Next Chapter by Shelagh Rogers on CBC. But I will always love NPR for This American Life and Ofeibea Quist-Arcton's voice. 
> 
> I would be very grateful for any feedback.
> 
> I am on [Tumblr](https://darknessaroundus.tumblr.com/).


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